Six O'Clock Silence

by Joanne Pence

  Richie was outraged. And worried.

  He wouldn’t have thought real estate was a reason for killing, but the mayor’s own chief-of-staff seemed to have been the recipient of an assisted suicide—and the assistance wasn’t performed by his doctor, or at his request. The fact that Rebecca had once dated the staffer caused Richie to think she had amazingly poor taste in men—before she met him, of course.

  “I need you to keep an eye on her and her apartment,” Richie said. “Someone left warning messages on her front door and her car windshield, and then yesterday, someone tried to broadside her with a truck. Take some of that surveillance equipment you’ve got and string it up so we can watch her apartment in case our messenger pays a repeat visit. But most of all, you need to be ready to act if someone tries to hurt her. She can be pretty hard to surveil—especially if she notices you and throws a fit. But at least try. She’s making someone very nervous, and I want to know who.”

  “Anything for you, boss,” Vito said. “And the Inspector.”

  o0o

  As Rebecca sat at her desk, she realized the only interesting case she had was a skeleton. Everything else involved writing reports and filling out paperwork.

  She knew Dr. Ramirez was having a great time working with the team of specialists, but they had nothing to give Rebecca as yet. Evelyn refused to speculate on how many years the body had been buried out there. Was it five years or fifty? Rebecca could somewhat understand her recalcitrance. After all, she had called in forensic specialists. If her own guesses were way off from what the “experts” eventually determined, that could undermine her credibility in the future—and her self-esteem.

  The delay gave Rebecca an excuse to turn her attention to the issue that had been on her mind ever since her conversation with Kiki.

  She headed down to the Records Unit to access the report on the fatal accident that had killed Isabella Russo. The Records Unit directed her to the traffic section. There, she found out the exact date of the accident, four and a half years earlier. She handed the desk clerk a request for the file.

  The file was surprisingly thin. She hesitated to take it up to her desk. If anyone saw her with it, they would ask questions—questions for which she had no good answers.

  She found a corner of the records office, pushed a chair into it, and sat. With the file on her lap, she began to read.

  The first thing she saw were photographs. They were difficult to look at. The once beautiful woman took the brunt of the accident to the head and face, despite the seatbelt and airbag—an airbag that hadn’t opened for some unknown reason. Isabella had been pronounced dead at the scene.

  Rebecca knew the area where the accident had taken place. It was a mixture of open roadway and tunnels leading to the Golden Gate Bridge. Isabella’s car was inside the tunnel going at such a high speed that when it failed to negotiate a slight curve, it jumped the low cement barricade at the foot of the tunnel walls, and hit the wall head on. Skid marks indicated she had tried braking, but she did it much too late. It appeared her car may have been hit by others as well, but if so, those other cars fled the scene. The accident had happened just before six in the morning. Six o'clock, Rebecca thought, the break of a new day, and also the time when Richie 's world suddenly turned bitter, cold, and silent.

  She forced herself to read on.

  Several people reported what looked like a stalled car or an accident from their cell phones as they passed by.

  The month was January, so the sky was still dark that time of the morning. The fog was heavy, and the thick mist had drifted inside the tunnel. The authorities speculated that the fog may have caused Isabella not to see how the roadway curved and she continued to drive straight ahead. Or, more likely, she simply fell asleep at the wheel.

  Strangely, a 911 call logged at 5:55 a.m. had reported two vehicles recklessly speeding along the Marina Green, a street that led to the bridge approach. The caller said the police needed to slow those cars down before anyone got hurt, and then he hung up before giving any more information, including his name.

  Apparently, no one had looked into the call, or it had led to a dead end.

  Rebecca then turned to brief interviews with Isabella’s family, including Richie. None of them had any idea where she might have been going, or why she would have been leaving the city at that time of the morning.

  Next were contacts with Isabella's friends and then with her employer.

  Oh, my God! As Rebecca read the employer’s name, she suddenly understood Richie’s renewed interest in Isabella’s death—Superior Savings Bank. It had come up just a few weeks earlier as she investigated several murders involving, among others, Audrey Poole, one of Richie’s old girlfriends. Poole had set up a scam real estate holding company, and her bank was Superior Savings.

  And, Rebecca thought, loan officers dealt with real estate loans.

  Were they all connected: Audrey Poole, Isabella Russo, and Richie?

  No. Rebecca was letting her wary cop brain get ahead of her rational side. Richie had decided to look into Isabella’s death because he hadn’t known there was any connection between Isabella and Audrey’s holding company.

  He had to have been as stunned by the news as Rebecca. Why, she wondered, hadn’t he told her about any of this?

  Instead, he was looking into the situation alone—suspicious about what happened out there on the Golden Gate Bridge approach in those early morning hours.

  Rebecca could understand why.

  She turned back to the file and learned that Isabella had never even gotten a traffic ticket.

  She gazed again at scenes from the accident, and hoped Richie never saw them. She looked for some hint as to why the airbag hadn’t deployed, but it was just put down as a malfunction. An ironically timed malfunction, Rebecca thought, but she understood from people who worked traffic accidents, that the bags weren’t 100% reliable.

  Isabella had no alcohol, drugs, or medicines in her system. It wasn’t possible to test for falling asleep, and that was the investigators’ best reason for the accident. It would explain why she hadn’t turned the wheel, and that she might have woken up only at the last second and stomped on the brakes at that point.

  There wasn’t much else in the files. Rebecca looked for the name of the investigating officer. Jim Taylor was part of the SFPD’s Special Operations Branch’s Traffic Company. One of the branch’s duties was to investigate traffic accidents. This was the sort of accident that stuck with a person. She borrowed the clerk’s computer to do a quick check to see if Jim Taylor still worked Traffic.

  He had retired four years earlier.

  CHAPTER TEN

  At six o’clock that evening, as Rebecca once again parked her car atop a red “no parking” zone near her apartment, she scanned the street for Richie’s black Porsche. It wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Disappointment struck. Four days had passed since she last saw him. Not that she was counting.

  With each step she took toward her apartment, she hoped Richie had parked somewhere else, that he'd be on the other side of the door when she walked into the flat, but it wasn't her nearly six-foot, oh-so-handsome Italian who greeted her, but Spike. He bounded from the sofa where Richie so often sat and jumped into her arms, plying her chin with kisses. She hugged the little guy and kissed him back. Still, she couldn’t help but wish it was Richie in her arms.

  But only memories of Richie filled the room, and those memories weren't nearly enough.

  She and Spike went out to the backyard, and she played fetch with him a while. Back indoors, she gave Spike his Alpo dinner, then made herself ramen and a tossed salad, paired with a piece of Popeye’s Chicken from the night before. But she only nibbled at the food, offering bits and pieces to Spike.

  She had finished eating, and was putting her dishes in the dishwasher, when there was a knock on her door.

  She guessed one of her upstairs neighbors, Kiki Nuñez or Bradley Frick, had come down the backstairs to visit with her. The b
est thing about her tiny apartment was that it opened to a backyard with plants and benches. Since her upstairs neighbors rarely used the yard, it felt as if it were her own private garden. She and Spike loved it.

  Her heart leapt when she opened the front door and found Richie standing there, but she couldn't throw herself into his arms. He wasn't alone. One of his best friends, a worrisome fellow who called himself Shay was at his side. For a reason never explained to Rebecca, Shay didn’t like using his real name, Henry Ian Tate, III. In fact, despite his outrageously good looks, with lush blond hair and blue eyes tinged with a hint of lavender, his gaze was so cold he looked like he could chisel stone with a mere glance. Rebecca didn’t know anything about his background, but she suspected words like “sniper,” “CIA,” and even “contractor,” had to be a part of it. She also found it ironic that his initials were HIT, as in “hit man.”

  But then, her gaze hurried back to Richie, and the memory of the accident file and of the photos she had seen that afternoon struck. Despite everything, her heart went out to him for the loss he had suffered.

  He looked at her strangely, as if reading that something was wrong, and she forced a small smile to her lips. “What a surprise this is,” she said with a lilt. “Come in.”

  She held open the door as they entered. The two men were an interesting study in contrast, Richie with his dark good looks, exuding warmth and emotion, while Shay’s fair demeanor was one of unflinching iciness. At the same time, both dressed impeccably and shared tall, slim good-looks. More than once, Rebecca had watched women cease all conversation to gawk when the two entered a bar, nightclub, or even an inexpensive café.

  “Can I get you something?” she asked, uncomfortable with the formality that was keeping them apart. “A beer perhaps, or some wine?”

  “Beer would be good.” Richie’s voice sounded all too businesslike. He took off his jacket and threw it over the back of the sofa.

  “Ice water for me.” Shay said. He removed one of the ever-present ascots he wore and placed it on a coat hook by the door. He left his jacket on.

  Rebecca got the drinks while Spike greeted Richie exuberantly, and even allowed Shay to pat his head. Rebecca found her little dog’s lack of discernment disturbing at times.

  “I told Shay about the skeleton that had been dug up in the sewer trench,” Richie said, as Rebecca took a bottle of beer from the fridge. “He was fascinated by the new techniques that might allow you to ID a bunch of bones.”

  She studied Shay. Richie’s words didn’t ring true. Shay knew far more than most people about all kinds of investigative techniques, whether legitimate or not. “I had no idea you were interested in such things,” she said to Shay.

  Rebecca brought a tray of drinks into the small living room, set it on the coffee table, and sat on the sofa with Richie.

  Shay took the rocking chair near the heater. His cold eyes stared at her. “New police techniques always interest me. I take it no identification has been made yet.”

  “Not, yet,” she said, reaching for the glass of pinot grigio she had poured for herself. “And, I’m sorry to disappoint, but the techniques being used aren’t all that new. The only thing different is that Evelyn, that’s Dr. Ramirez, the ME, called in a team of experts and together they’re going over the skeleton. It seems to be a fun time for all of them. I guess these situations don’t come up all that often.”

  “What are these techniques?” Shay asked.

  Rebecca sipped some wine. Shay knew this stuff. What game was he playing? She debated not answering him, but that wouldn’t get her anywhere. Maybe if she went along, she’d learn why he was asking. “I’m sure you’ve heard of the Combined DNA Index System, CODIS, used by federal, state and local law enforcement to exchange and compare DNA profiles.”

  “Sure,” Shay muttered.

  “Well, we now have the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, called NamUs—an acronym too cute by half. Evelyn’s forensic team will work out sex, race, and any distinctive body features to whatever degree possible. They’ll then apply their findings against the various databases available.”

  “Yes, but you’ll end up with a lot of similarities.” Shay’s tone was dismissive as he pushed a lock of hair off his forehead with a distracted rake of his fingers. “That technique leaves plenty of room for confusion and misnaming.”

  First he asks me questions, and now he argues with my answers? “Not if we have a DNA match.” Rebecca hoped she didn’t sound as defensive as she felt.

  “Well, of course. But if you don’t?” he asked.

  “Ease up, Shay,” Richie said.

  “It’s all right, Richie.” Rebecca folded her arms. “It’s easy enough to answer. If we don’t have a DNA match, we manually pare down the names using geographical location, when the person went missing, age, whatever. Once we have a workable number of possibilities, we use dental images from the skeleton, and go through dental records looking for a match. At that point, old-fashioned police work will identify the person. But you already know that, Shay. So why are you asking?”

  His mouth tightened. “I’m just thinking that sounds like a lot of expense for a skeleton. Do you have any idea of the age yet? Could it be someone who died a century ago, for example? And if so, why does anyone care?”

  “Okay,” Richie interrupted again. “I think that’s enough with the third degree.”

  Rebecca put her hand on Richie’s arm. The more questions Shay asked, the more curious she became as to why he was so interested. “I don’t mind the questions,” she said. “Of course, I can’t give out details about an open investigation, but in general terms, an entomologist looking at the insects and detritus around the cadaver should be able to give some idea as to dates involved—along with an examination of the bones themselves.”

  Shay’s eyes narrowed. “You used the word investigation. Are you saying you suspect foul play?”

  Rebecca pursed her lips. “I always suspect foul play.”

  “Well,” Richie interrupted, clearly not liking the way this conversation was going. He faced Shay. “I suspect that answers your questions.”

  “It does,” he replied.

  “But Shay hasn’t answered mine yet. Exactly, why are you curious about this case?” Rebecca asked.

  Shay lifted those intense ice blue eyes of his, but his focus was slightly off, as if he were looking past her. His gaze usually bothered her, but this evening she sensed pain in it, as if the coldness covered a deep trouble. No sooner had she thought that then his glare shifted to land directly and harshly her way. She guessed she’d been wrong. “It’s not about this case,” he growled. “It’s research.”

  She nodded. “Of course. What else could it be?”

  He stood. “Right. If you’ll both excuse me, I’ve got some business to take care of.”

  Richie stood as well. “I should also get going. I’ve got some people I need to see.” He looked even more troubled than Shay as he confessed, “I’m sorry about all this Rebecca. I … I’ll call you soon, okay?”

  She wanted to put a hand on Richie’s arm, to ask him to stay, but she held back. The man who'd spent so many hours in her apartment, in her arms, in her bed, and her life, had other things on his mind. Other things that didn't include her.

  He gave Rebecca a quick, perfunctory kiss on the lips, then both men said their goodbyes and left.

  Rebecca stood lonely and alone in her apartment replaying in her mind all that had just happened. She wasn’t sure which of the two men troubled her more.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A little after eight o’clock the next morning, Dr. Evelyn Ramirez waltzed into Homicide and met Rebecca’s gaze with a huge smile. Rebecca, along with the other detectives in the room at the moment—Sutter, Paavo, and Calderon—stared at her as if she were a creature from another planet. First, Evelyn rarely smiled, and secondly, she never, ever, left her basement lair to appear in Homicide or anywhere else in the Hall of Justice unless deman
ded to do so by court order.

  “We did it!” Evelyn sang out as she marched forward waving a file folder over her head. “It came together much faster than I ever imagined. That’s what happens when a great team is put together.”

  “You’ve got a name?” Rebecca asked hopefully.

  “We do.” She placed the folder squarely in the center of Rebecca’s desk, atop the other papers Rebecca had been looking at. “He was missing, and now he’s found. You can thank me with a glass of wine when you have time.” With that, she breezed out again.

  Rebecca opened the folder. Inside was the photo of the California driver’s license showing a stocky man named Yussef Najjar, with curly black hair, brown eyes, and a fleshy face. Looking at his birth date, if he were still alive, he would be forty-three years of age. He had died nine years earlier.

  She quickly looked over the forensic reports from Evelyn’s team of experts. There was no DNA match, but working with the NamUs records they were able to find a dental record match for the victim. There was no doubt as to his identity.

  Rebecca then turned to the more interesting information—the missing person’s investigation, which had been conducted nine years earlier by the San Mateo Police Department with some assistance from the Missing Person division of the SFPD’s Special Victims Unit. San Mateo’s involvement was a surprise. It was a small city about twenty miles south of San Francisco.

  Dr. Ramirez had enclosed a copy of their investigation.

  Nine years earlier, Najjar had been reported missing by his employer, the manager of a carpet warehouse in San Mateo. He said he had tried to reach Najjar for several days with no luck.

  Najjar had given no information about his family to his employer, and it took the San Mateo investigators several days before they located someone who knew Najjar had relatives in San Francisco. The police went through the phone book, calling every Najjar listed. Najjar’s mother answered one of their calls. They went to her, and she told them that Yussef Najjar had returned to Lebanon.